People of the Revolution and the USSR

Alfred Rosmer

Alfred Rosmer

From syndicalism through the Comintern to the Fourth International: a French internationalist across a century of revolution

Lenin described Rosmer as "a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut in five or six languages." — quoted in Philippe Robrieux's internal history of the French Communist Party

American-born French revolutionary syndicalist and a key figure in the Comintern leadership. With Pierre Monatte he published La Vie ouvrière and organised anti-war internationalism; he spent seventeen months in Moscow helping found the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern). A Political Bureau member of the French Communist Party, he was expelled in 1924 for defending Trotsky, thereafter committing to the Left Opposition and Trotskyism. In 1938 he hosted the founding conference of the Fourth International at his home in Périgny. In his later years he signed the Manifesto of 121 against the Algerian War and wrote the classic memoir Lenin's Moscow.

Career timeline
  • 1909–1914Co-editor of the CGT journal *La Vie ouvrière* with Pierre Monatte; leading figure in revolutionary syndicalism
  • 1915–1918Organised French participation in the Zimmerwald Conference; sustained anti-war activity throughout WWI as an internationalist
  • 1919–1920Active in the Committee for Adhesion to the Third International; sent to Moscow, elected to the ECCI during a seventeen-month stay
  • 1921Helped found the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern) at its inaugural congress; served on the provisional council with Lozovsky and Tom Mann
  • 1922–1924Political Bureau member of the French Communist Party and general secretary of *L'Humanité*; core leader of the party's Left current
  • 1924.10Expelled from the PCF alongside Boris Souvarine and Pierre Monatte for opposing the anti-Trotsky campaign
  • 1929–1931Co-founded the Communist League, France's first Trotskyist organisation; resigned in 1931 over tactical differences
  • 1938.09Hosted the founding conference of the Fourth International at his home in Périgny, held clandestinely under threat of GPU assassinations
  • 1939Visited Trotsky in Mexico; served on the Dewey Commission and acted as guardian to Trotsky's grandson Sieva
  • 1940–1947Stranded in the United States by WWII; returned to France in 1947
  • 1953Published *Lenin's Moscow* (*Moscou sous Lénine*), with a preface by Albert Camus
  • 1960Signed the Manifesto of 121, supporting those who refused to fight in the Algerian War

Pierre Broué

Pierre Broué
Left critics of Bolshevism France French 1926–2005 ○ Natural causes

A committed historian of revolutionary movements

He read Spain’s revolution not as a side episode of the war, but as a defeated social revolution.

Pierre Broué was a French Trotskyist historian and teachers’ activist who studied communism and twentieth-century revolutionary movements. His 1961 history of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War, written with Émile Témime, interpreted the defeat of the revolutionary process through the clash of class forces inside the Republic and Stalinist policy. He combined political commitment with archival and editorial work on Trotsky and the Trotskyist movement.

Career timeline
  • 1944Joined the Parti communiste internationaliste and entered the Trotskyist movement
  • 1953Completed an early historical study of a historian of the French Revolution
  • 1960–1965Taught history and geography in secondary schools
  • 1961Published La Révolution et la guerre d’Espagne with Émile Témime
  • 1965–1975Taught contemporary history at Grenoble’s institute of political studies and organized in the OCI
  • 1972Published Révolution en Allemagne, 1917–1923
  • 1977Founded the Institut Léon Trotsky
  • 1997Published Histoire de l’Internationale communiste, 1919–1943